It is amazing how easy it is to get caught up in the “moment” of the celebrations and miss the heart or intention behind days off or celebrating!

This weekend, as you’ve got a little time, we’d encourage you to sit down and write out 50 things you are thankful or grateful for from this year.

It can be so easy for us to get caught up in the busyness of life, or to get in the mindset of complaining, rather than seeing all the things that we do have.

In thinking about writing 50 things you are thankful or grateful for, it is easy to think … “that’s too many” or “I don’t know what I’d write.” But we’d encourage you to try it.

As we did, we found that after the first 25 or so items, it caused us to think a little more intentionally about the things that we tend to take for granted … like the coffee-maker we use each morning or the abundance of shoes we have in our closet.

Like this:

How exciting that we have made it to the last month of 2017! What a ride it has been.

We’re not sure if you’ve ever dabbled in project or program management, and either way we’ve got a best practice from some of Coaching Right Now’s PM’ing team this week!

At the end of each project or program we love to capture our “lessons learned”. What are those things that either worked amazingly well that we’d LOVE to make sure we do again? Or, what are those things that did not work so well that we hope to never experience again?!

So for all of us, as we are closing up 2017 and moving into 2018, what if we were to take some time to think about our personal lessons learned?

Need some questions to get you started? Try these!

What are three things you are most proud of this year?

What made you proud of those things?

What is one thing that if you could do differently you would?

What is it about it that you’d want to change?

What are two things that surprised you about yourself, and would you want to do those things again?

If we had to guess, you may be feeling some of the pressure of the last “to-do’s” before you feel like you totally lose your team’s focus before Thanksgiving – and then in all the busyness of the weeks after!

We’ve found, over and over, that when people feel appreciated, they tend to stay more engaged.

Think about it. When was the last time someone called you out in a meeting, or sent you an email that said … “Thank you for when you did ‘this’. The insight that you brought was just what I needed to hear.”?

As you remember that, you probably felt seen or valued – or more likely, you wanted to bring your “a-game” again!

So, as you are jumping into next week and wanting to keep engagement and morale high, think about each of your team members …

What are a 1 or 2 things that you’ve seen each of them do in the last week that was more than what you were hoping for or expecting?

Write those things down, and we’d encourage you to send them an email (maybe even copying everyone else who was working on that project); or tell them about it in your next one-on-one.